WWII remains return to U.S.
CLEVELAND — Hands over their hearts, two family members who never got to know the handsome young U.S. airman stood watching his flag-draped coffin finally arrive home 63 years after his death.
Tech. Sgt. Richard R. Sargent of North Girard, Pa., had been missing in action since a World War II mission on April 16, 1944, over New Guinea.
The remains of the 23-year-old and nine other crew members were recovered after wreckage of a bomber was found in Morobe Province in New Guinea in 2001, according to the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.
Sargent's remains were returned to his family Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. A military honor guard carried his coffin from a Northwest flight to a hearse as police, fire and airport officials stood saluting.
"It's incredible," said nephew Alan Sargent. "He deserved every bit of this."
Sargent, 46, and his wife, Judy, then followed the hearse back to his uncle's hometown, which has changed names since his death more than six decades ago and is now called Lake City, a small town 15 miles southwest of Erie, Pa.
They planned to take a drive past his childhood house, not far from their home.
"It's closure," Alan Sargent said. "He's the last member of our family who didn't come home from World War II."
With the nation at war, Richard Sargent enlisted in the Army after a year of college and joined the Army Air Corps. In December 1943, he was deployed overseas.
"Dad said he was as good as he was good looking," said Sargent, recalling the words of his father, Robert, also a World War II veteran.
Four of the five Sargent brothers served in the war, and they said little about what happened to the one who didn't make it home.
Richard Sargent was an engineer on board a B-24 Liberator named "Here Tis." It was returning to an airfield at Nadzab, New Guinea, after bombing enemy targets near Hollandia.
The aircraft altered course because of bad weather and was flying to Saidor when it disappeared, according to the Defense Department.
Only the tail of the bomber was still intact when the wreckage was discovered six years ago. The numbers identifying it were still readable, Alan Sargent said.
A team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command surveyed the crash site in Morobe Province in 2002 and recovered remains as well as identification tags, including Sargent's, and other objects.
Scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used dental records, mitochondrial DNA and other tools to identify the remains.
Sargent, who would have been 87 on Sunday, will be buried Saturday with full military honors in Girard Cemetery, in Girard, Pa.
His 80-year-old brother Donald, also a World War II veteran, will be among those attending the funeral.
